Ah, Columbus, Ohio. Nice. Kinda pretty. Wish I could say more about it, but we didn't get to do much exploring while Old Gal was being fixed. We might have been able to, except for one thing: Freddie.
That's her in the front seat! She was almost 13 years old when we started this trip, and I was a little worried about her. Every time we stopped, we had to think first about what would be best for her. We didn't keep her in the RV for very long without us (and when there was a cross breeze, she was quite comfy sitting up front in one of the captain's chairs, as you can see)! At the truck stop, we sat with her on a leash in one of the few shady spots or walked around and made sure she had plenty of water. So when Old Gal had to be fixed, we made a nice space for Freddie behind the driver's seat of the car. But it's a little hard to "sight see" when the car is stuffed to the gills and there are kayaks on top. One stop short and Freddie could be flattened!
Instead, we found a place to park under a tree and waited for them to fix our house-on-wheels. And waited. And waited. I read, did crossword puzzles, checked out all the new Chevys in the dealership out front, walked Freddie 4 times, and tried to nap. We sat there for 7 hours! It was so tough to be patient. This was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime! We should be doing something fun! But making sure sweet Freddie was well taken care of was more important than anything else.
A few hundred dollars later, we got back on the road and zipped down Interstate 70 through the rest of Ohio and Indiana.
We stopped for the night in Terra Haute, just on the border of Illinois, boondocking in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Another night with no water hookup or electricity, and we were dirty, hot, and tired. This feeling began to gnaw at me in the pit of my stomach. What the heck did we do? Is this one huge mistake? What are we going to? Albuquerque is some place on a map, in the middle of a rectangular state that I've never been to, and we are headed there why? I couldn't remember.
I should mention that Thursday morning I got a call from one of the districts where I was substitute teaching in PA. It seems they wanted me to interview for an elementary teaching position! The woman on the phone wanted to know if I'd be available the next day. I told her I was currently in Ohio, on my way to relocating to New Mexico, so no, I wouldn't be available for an interview anytime soon. Sometimes you just have to laugh and keep going! What is there to say about that???
We pushed on through Illinois and into Missouri. I saw the Gateway Arch in St. Louis from the highway, and Jimmy took a picture when traffic had stopped on the bridge over the Mississippi.
That's our tour of St. Louis! Wish we could have stayed longer and looked around, checked it out, but that's what traveling with a 23 year old RV, a full car with kayaks on top, and a dog is like!!
Missouri was beautiful! What an unexpected surprise! There were really pretty mountains and everything was very green. It was 95 degrees and oppressively humid. From I-70 we got onto I-44 and went southwest to Carthage, MO. We splurged and stayed in an RV park for the night. Electricity! AC! Water! Cable TV! Showers!!! For those of you keeping track, we hadn't showered in a few days, since Ohio. Yuck!
This meant showering for the first time in Old Gal. J had used the shower when he first got her, but I had been dreading it. It's this tiny little space - maybe 2ft by 3 ft. There is just enough room to get the job done. Plus, you have to take a "Navy Shower". This is where you only use water to get wet and to wash off. I had scrubbed the shower top to bottom before we left so I knew it was clean, but it still seemed icky. Not so! It was great! Nice and cozy, and you don't get cold easily because it's a small space! Why would you waste the water by keeping it on the whole time? This process of moving and changing our lives continues to show me how things I thought I needed turned out to be unimportant in the end. We had each other, Freddie, a shower, and a comfy bed. What more do you need? For the first time since our trip began, I felt completely relaxed, grateful, and excited.
Hi all!
It's been a looooooooong time since I've written anything, I know! Many people have been asking me to keep writing, but for a long time I just couldn't do it. First, because it was hard being in a new place, and we were spending all of our time trying to find work and having no luck. I wasn't inspired to write about how scary things were becoming for us! Then I actually got a job, and had to devote all of my time to it, and writing seemed like something I could skip in favor of a little more sleep or a little bit of fun.
However, now that I am relaxing / convalescing after the hardest 5 months of teaching I've ever had, I think I'm ready to continue writing about our experiences. **SPOILER ALERT** For those of you who just want to cut to the chase, we made it here safely, I got a job, and we're surviving. For those of you who want to hear the story, read on!
Isn't she a beauty???!!!?
So...where were we? Oh, right! It's Tuesday, June 1st. We were boondocking in Akron, Ohio. Boondocking, for those uninitiated to the world of RVing, is when you basically just pull off the road and stay somewhere overnight. You don't hook up to anything like electric or water, and most times, it's free! There are also very few places where you can do it. Camping World and Wal-Mart are two places that will let you park overnight in their lots. So we parked in the Akron Camping World parking lot, and settled in for the night. The only problem was that no electricity also meant no AC, which meant sleeping with the 2 tiny little back windows open and praying for a breeze. We were trying to be as careful with money as possible, so we planned to boondock a lot during our trip. I'm sure it's great in the spring and fall, but in summer, not so much!
Feeling grumpy the next morning from lack of sleep, I settled into the difficult job of resting under a tree with Freddie (our pooch) while J worked on the RV. It was having some charging problems and the batteries were getting low, and he wanted to see if he could get it running better before we took off and possibly broke down on the highway. He worked on it for a good two hours, but still wasn't happy with it. Time was passing and we were still only in Akron!
J decided to keep going and get some more miles under our belts. We got about a half hour down the road when J told me over our walkie talkies that we had to get off the road again. I felt panic rise in my throat. We were still only 5 hours away from home!! He said we needed to find someplace to plug in to charge the batteries. We then spent a good bit of time trying to figure out where we were and if there were any campgrounds nearby. We had hit a rural area! We looked in our trusty Woodall's Camping Guide and found a place about 5 miles away. J was really afraid that Old Gal would get stuck on one of the small country roads we had to travel to get there, but she made it just fine!
The campground was quiet and serene. I could see a pretty lake down the hill, gorgeous willow trees and oaks and many RVs in evenly spaced rows. My first RV camp ever! They had a pool, and I was dying to get into my suit and dive in. But before I could do that, we needed to find our site, hook up the water, electricity, and the poo tank (more about that later!)! As we were setting up outside, we heard a strange 'clop clop' noise coming down the road, but the foliage was so dense we couldn't see what it was until it went past us. An Amish man driving a buggy! It was an unexpected & cool sight that made me smile at the end of an otherwise frustrating day.
We left early the next morning, ready to get back on the road. We got about 20 minutes away from the campground when J pulled into a Flying J Truck Stop. Apparently, even though we plugged in the night before, the electrical system still wasn't charged, and J decided it was time to call a professional. This is where having an iPhone or other smart phone comes in handy! We called around and found a Chevy dealership in Columbus, about a half hour away. They said they could take us first thing the next morning. J didn't want to run Old Gal anymore that day, so we couldn't go back to the campsite, which meant we spent a whole day at the truck stop.
For those of you who've never spent much time at a truck stop, I can tell you they're quite interesting! We perused the extensive Country Market, sat in the trucker's lounge and watched an uncomfortable 15 minutes of something on TV, then did a little laundry just for kicks. The best part was at sunset when we walked over to the "pickle park" - the giant parking lot for the tractor trailers. J used to drive a truck for awhile way back when, so be brought me over there to watch the semi drivers back expertly into spots with only 5 or so feet between them and the trailers on either side. Pretty cool! But did you know that in summer, every tractor trailer that stops off for the night will keep his or her engine running all night so they can run their AC? We watched for about 15 minutes when I noticed that all the trucks were running, not just the ones coming in and out. No wonder we use most of the world's fuel! Do you know how many trucks there are on the roads at any given time??? I have to say, though, that we met quite a few truckers on our trip, and they were some of the nicest people we've ever met. They work long, hard hours and they spend a lot of time alone, so they're a friendly bunch in general. Finally, the smell of diesel was becoming overpowering and we went back to the front parking lot and sweet Old Gal, where we sweated through another night of boondocking.
